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7th June 2024
04:07pm BST
TV doctor Michael Mosley has been missing on the Greek island of Symi since 1:30pm on Wednesday afternoon, and local services have ramped up the search today in the hopes of finding the 67-year-old.
The alarm was initially raised after a post was shared on Facebook confirming his disappearance.
“Have you seen this man? He set off to walk back from St Nick’s at about 13.30 and failed to make it home,” the post read.
“His friends are concerned as it is 6 hours since they last saw him. His name is Dr Mike Mosley and he is a familiar face for many British people as he has appeared on the BBC.”
Today marks the third day of searching, with a search and rescue team from Athens having carried out extensive work with drones and other more sophisticated equipment throughout yesterday.
More men joined the search on Friday morning, police said, and the search expanded into the water surrounding the Greek island.
The coast guard which operates on the island of Symi said in a public statement: “All our patrol boats are searching … about five and also all the private boats, commercial boats know about the incident and they look for (him) also, in this area, (so this is) the private, the commercial and the patrol (boats looking).”
Deputy mayor of Symi, Ilias Chaskas, issued a new update on Friday confirming that “divers are looking in the water”.
Dr Mosley was reported as missing at around 7pm on Wednesday evening after he failed to return home to his wife and children at their accommodation.
According to wife Dr Clare Bailey, her husband went for a walk on his own along the coast from Saint Nicholas Beach to the Pedi, but failed to come back.
Eleftherios Papakalodoukas, mayor of Symi, told media that firefighters think it is “impossible” Mosley is still on the island.
“It is a very small, controlled area, full of people. So, if something happened to him there, we would have found him by now,” he said.
Joe Inwood of BBC Newsnight is on the island and shared the challenges that they are facing on the ground.
“I can tell you it is scorching here,” he said. Temperatures are expected to reach highs of 36C on Friday.
“I’ve also managed to twist my ankle, I’ve only done a short bit of this, my producer came back feeling like she’d had too much sun just from that. It’s worth pointing out it is a perilous walk even though it is fairly straightforward.”
He continued: “He is definitely not on that path, there’s no shade throughout, there’s no cover.”
He described the path as having “lots of exposed rock, very, very few places to hide from the baking sun.”
Inwood continued to explain the situation on Symi.
“It’s an island with only 2,500 people on it so they haven’t got a huge amount of resources, but they have been bringing them in,” he said.
“The Greeks have really been doing what they can but this is a small place, they don’t have the sort of resources you would need for a big search and rescue operation just sitting around here on Symi.”
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